


A Fate Worse Than Death

by skittenninja



Category: Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt, Episode: s03e09 Be Very Afraid!, Eugene is not okay, Gen, I keep hurting poor Eugene, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Minor Eugene Fitzherbert | Flynn Rider/Rapunzel, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:54:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22932094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skittenninja/pseuds/skittenninja
Summary: Eugene was not afraid. He wasn't afraid of the red rocks, or of what they could do. He wasn't scared of bags under his eyes or a bad hair day.He wasn't even scared of dying.At least, that's what he told himself. After all, he'd already faced death. What could possibly be worse?
Comments: 17
Kudos: 69





	A Fate Worse Than Death

Eugene was no stranger to death.

He’d been running from it since he was just a kid. Always looking for enough to eat and eventually looking for trouble in all the wrong places.

And of course, there was the fact that he’d literally died only a couple of years ago.

Eugene was no stranger to death, and so when the red rocks began to pop-up all-over Corona, when it was determined that they showed a person their worst fear, death was not what he was expecting.

After all, he’d managed to survive it. How could he be afraid of it?

At least, that was what he told himself in the beginning.

The first time his appearance looked disheveled, it was because of the cowlick. It initially startled him for reasons he would not share with anyone, but it was manageable. He had been right. He wasn’t scared of dying.

This wasn’t death.

Eugene could handle this. He needed to keep everyone calm while Rapunzel and Varian were off trying to fix the problem.

No big deal. He was fine.

When he looked in the mirror again, he saw dark circles under his eyes. They weren’t like the cowlick, though. They didn’t make him look just tired or disheveled. They looked… unnerving. The colour was far to dark and they seemed to sink into his skin.

Eugene resolved to try and avoid reflective surfaces as much as possible until the red rocks were gone. He was hoping no one would notice, and he felt confident no one would. They all had their own problems to deal with and Eugene had made it his priority to help them, not the other way around.

Hours went by and the situation grew worse, but Eugene had hope they could hold out until Rapunzel and Varian solved the issue. He knew they would.

It was only a matter of time.

But as time passed, his reflection grew more and more frightening, and the drastic changes that it exhibited drew Eugene’s eye every time he passed something reflective. He kept telling himself not to look, but it was so frightening and _wrong_ that glancing at it was instinctive in each instance.

Eugene saw something about him come undone each time. His skin was way too pale, cheeks far too hollow, teeth almost gone, as if he was rotting away. The darkness under his eyes had worsened and his eyes looked sunken in their sockets, as if they were barely attached to his skull anymore. His reflection’s fingers and arms were impossibly frail, and he could see so many bones pressing up against flesh. His clothes hung far too loosely off of him and his hair had fallen out in clumps.

He looked like a walking corpse, and it terrified him every time.

Eugene wished that was the end of it, but it wasn’t.

Soon, anything with his name or face on it started to disappear.

He knew that it wasn’t real, that all of that was still there, that the rocks were just preventing him from seeing it. But he couldn’t help that sick feeling that crept in whenever a painting Rapunzel had done of him was suddenly gone or changed to be of someone else. Whenever his name was erased from written word.

_This isn’t death_ , is what Eugene kept trying to tell himself. _That’s not what this is. I’m not afraid. I’m fine. I can handle this._

Deep down, he knew he was lying to himself. He just wasn’t ready to admit that yet.

Night fell. They’d decided to hold a talent show to distract everyone. Eugene was hoping that distraction would work for him, too.

He was making progress in forgetting about his reflection, ignoring that he seemed to be slowly disappearing from recent memory around the palace.

Then he’d felt the ghost of a familiar pain in his side, followed quickly by something that was both warm and wet.

Eugene placed a hand over what he knew to be a wound and dared to look down at it afterwards.

His hand was stained red.

His hand was red, and his clothes were now becoming stained with red, and there were red rocks everywhere, and for a moment he saw red beginning to encase his feet, freezing him to the spot.

Eugene tried to breathe steadily, the mixture of the cold spreading upwards from his feet and warmth spreading downwards from his side churning his stomach.

He was fine. He could handle this.

He wasn’t dead.

Repeating that to himself enough times seemed to do the trick. The freezing red retreated from his body, and he was no longer frozen in the middle of a palace hall.

Eugene let out a shaky laugh. The warm red of his own blood still stained his clothes, and it wouldn’t come off his hand no matter how much he tried to wipe it against a handkerchief, but at least he could move again. He could still help everyone else.

Movement at the end of the hall caught his eye, the familiar sight of blonde hair causing Eugene’s heart to sing with joy.

“Blondie!” He cried, beginning to run towards Rapunzel. “Thank goodness you’re here. Things were getting worse and we decided to put on this talent show, but I don’t know how much that would have- “

Eugene stopped running, his pace slowing suddenly and drastically. Rapunzel was still walking in his direction.

She hadn’t responded to him.

“Rapunzel?” He called to her tentatively.

There was again no answer, no acknowledgement of his presence. She just kept walking and walking, and Eugene’s heart sank further and further as she got closer and closer without saying a word to him.

As she walked right through him, as if he didn’t exist at all.

As if he were just a ghost. One that everyone had forgotten.

Eugene’s mind was reeling. Rapunzel was back, meaning they must have stopped the rocks, but she hadn’t seen him. He was still bleeding, and pale, and corpse-like, and he was hit with the brutal idea that maybe it was because all of this was _real._

He wasn’t dead. He’d been partially right in saying that death wasn’t what he feared, because that wasn’t the whole truth.

Eugene was scared of dying _alone_ , with no one to remember him. No one who loved him. No sense of identity, or purpose, or belonging or family. His image, which he’d tied his whole sense of self to years ago, disappeared from paintings and his reflection became horrifying. His name, his real one, the one he’d decided to redeem himself with, disappeared from writing when he tried to find it. Erased and forgotten, just like his former image.

And Rapunzel, the woman who had changed his life, the woman he loved, couldn’t see him. Couldn’t remember him.

How could she love him if she didn’t even know him?

He wasn’t just dead.

This was a fate far worse than death.

An overwhelming sense of fear and sadness hit Eugene in a wave, and he was so consumed by it that he didn’t notice that his feet were becoming frozen again. All he could think about was how he was alone, and forgotten, and that everything that had ever mattered to him or did matter to him was crumbling right before him.

He couldn’t handle this. This was far too much for him to process. How could he hope to help anyone, to matter or make a difference, if he didn’t even exist anymore-

“Eugene?”

The sound of his name snapped him out of it. Someone could see him. They knew who he was. He did exist.

Eugene closed his eyes and took a deep breath. This wasn’t real, he reminded himself. He was here. He was alive, he was loved, and he mattered. He could help.

The frozen feeling retreated from his feet once again, and Eugene opened his eyes.

Lance was standing right in front of him. Eugene had been so caught up in fear, drowning in his nightmare, that he hadn’t even noticed his friend walk right up to him.

He looked extremely concerned.

“Eugene?” Lance said again, having not received a response the first time.

Eugene immediately tried to compose himself, attempting to ignore the blood that was still incessantly trickling from that wound.

“Sorry, I was just… thinking.”

“Eugene, I saw you. I know that’s not true,” Lance said, seeing through his weak attempt to hide what had just happened. “Are you okay?”

“What? Me? I’m totally fine! I just thought I saw a person somehow even more handsome than myself, is all. It was so weird, he looked almost exactly like me. Wish you could’ve seen him.”

Eugene laughed at the end of his lie, bravado returning to his voice. He couldn’t tell anyone what he’d seen. He needed to help everyone right now, and talking about that wound, or his reflection, or the fake Rapunzel he’d just seen wouldn’t achieve that.

“Come on, let’s go finish setting up that talent show. I’ve gotta tell you, there were some surprising entries on that sign-up sheet I handed out,” Eugene said as he started exiting the hall.

Lance looked completely unconvinced by Eugene’s story, but didn’t press any further. Pushing Eugene to talk wouldn’t yield any results, and Lance had been his friend long enough to know that.

So, Eugene made an effort to talk about anything else. Anything other than what was happening. He made an effort to avoid looking at reflective surfaces, or at any paintings where he knew he should be, or even at his own shirt.

He was fine. He could handle this.

He was no stranger to death.

**Author's Note:**

> I really liked that Eugene got to be a leader and hold down the fort in this episode, but I also just wanted to explore a darker possibility for his worst fear. So, I wrote both :p


End file.
